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George Phillies
Background * Libertarian Party * Was candidate for Libertarian Party nomination for US President in 2008. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Phillies Links * Source: Phillies2008.org from March, 2006 Issues Immigration Someday, the Libertarian message of peace, liberty, and prosperity reach the entire world, so all people will enjoy the high standard of living we take for granted. In that day, immigration and open borders will be non-issues. We may differ as to what our laws should be. However, Americans are entitled to the certainty that their country's just laws will be enforced until those laws are changed. Americans who quote the Statue of Liberty's message 'Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free' should recall it was written when France, Germany and Russia were autocratic monarchies The huddled masses of Europe now breathe free in their own countries. Civil Liberties The Oath of Office of the President is to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. When a President takes office, he should place his hand on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights he is swearing to protect. When someone tells the President 'The Constitution is not a suicide pact' as a justification for illegal deeds, he is urging that our government be overthrown. Education There is no more important investment in the future than the education of our children and grandchildren. When you invest wisely by paying to educate a child, whether your own child or the child of impoverished parents, you should receive a dollar for dollar Federal tax credit for your investment. No Child Left Behind George Bush wants to rescue the education of our children, using all the wisdom and compassion he used to rescue New Orleans. The No Child Left Behind Act should be repealed. The Federal government should leave education to states and communities. The Kelo Decision Should your house belong to you, or to the lounge lizard who bribed your city council? Your house should belong to you. Takings should be limited to traditional public purposes. Governments should be forbidden to use eminent domain to seize your house and hand it over to a developer or sports stadium. Also, if your home is taken for a legitimate public purpose, the fair value of the property should include your emotional loss and the cost of your time and effort to relocate. The Budget Deficit George Bush and his Democratic and Republican allies just gave America the biggest tax increase in history. It's called the budget deficit and it has a unique twist: You spend the money. Your grandkids get the bill, labeled 'interest on the national debt'. The grandchild tax is a terrible gift for our grandchildren. We should end the grandchild tax and pay our own bills. Federal debt should only be created in the direst of national emergencies and should be promptly discharged when the emergency is over. Medical Care Expenses Why is health insurance so expensive? One large reason is cost transfers. Hospitals are required to give free medical care to large numbers of people who have no insurance. They pay for that care by charging it to the people who have insurance. Cost transfers should be made illegal: Your insurance should only pay for your care. If a hospital is required by law to provide free care, the legal requirement should come with the money to pay for that care. Also, all medical care costs should have the same tax basis: No matter whether your employer pays for your insurance, you pay for insurance, or you pay for medical costs, those payments should be excluded from your taxable income. Corporate Welfare Your neighbors should make money by selling desired goods and services, not by bribing Congressmen to give them subsidies out of your tax payments. Corporate welfare should be brought to an end. Free Trade, NAFTA, CAFTA When a country is a dictatorship that suppresses labor unions and shoots labor organizers, the goods it exports are stolen property, stolen from the workers coerced to make them, that cannot be traded freely. We should not engage in 'free trade' in stolen property. Furthermore, it is only fair that all manufacturers pay the same taxes. We may differ as to what those taxes should be. However, there should not be one tax rate for Ford Motors, and another much higher tax rate for General Motors. When we place a financial burden however labeled on American manufacturers, fairness dictates that foreign imports be subject to the same burden, a tax equivalent to whatever minimum wage and environmental restrictions foreign manufacturers are avoiding. Abortion Government should take no role in this matter. It should not encourage or discourage abortion. It should not force women to bear children they do not want. It should not force opponents of abortion to pay for abortions. People who bomb abortion clinics and churches are criminals who should be brought to justice. Presidential Royalism We have a President, not an emperor. Americans who dissent from elected Federal officers are true patriots who understand where America was born. Advocates of Free Speech zones, into which protesters are herded and hidden from the press, are dangerous subversives who should not have a role in setting government policy. Patriotic Americans do not grovel. They should not mindlessly stand and applaud because a President walks into the room. you, if you want to stand, applaud, or throw yourself on your knees, it's your right to do so. A Loyal, Patriotic Civil Service Loyal Americans obey the Law of the land. They do not make warrantless searches of your home. They do not wiretap your phone calls without court orders. They do not throw throw Americans into gulags, detaining them without trial or access to attorneys. We need a Federal government composed of loyal Americans who love our country. Federal employees who make warrantless searches, perform warrantless wiretaps, and detain citizens without trial are disloyal to our country and should be replaced. Prohibition When I was a little boy, television was filled with gangster prohibition movies. My parents, who were very wise people, told me that there were two certainties about prohibition: It was a total failure. No one would ever be dumb enough to try it again. Now we have drug prohibition, a total failure that wastes tens of billions of dollars, gives criminal records to millions of Americans, and can't even keep drugs out of our prisons. It's time to treat marijuana the way we treat alcohol. Yes, we do have people with alcohol problems. We live in an imperfect world. Sometimes the best we can do is contained in the Hippocratic oath of ancient physicians: At least, do not make matters worse than when you started. National Defense When the Cold War ended, America should have contracted its military to match its defense needs. We maintain a huge fleet in the Atlantic, an ocean that borders only on friendly countries; that fleet makes no sense. Our military spending is half the world's total, and most of the rest is spent by our allies; that spending makes no sense. There should be massive cuts in defense spending. We should take seriously FDR's laws on military reserves: As an organizational issue, States should put their main emphasis on State Defense Forces, not the National Guard, putting the same fine people where they can best protect America. The search for Mr. Bin Laden needs groups of specialists, not shoals of tanks and clouds of aircraft that muddy the waters. Torture. Rendition. Secret Prisons. These are all UnAmerican activities. Real Americans do not torture. Real Americans do not kidnap so others can torture for us. Real Americans support timely public trials with juries, not military kangaroo court tribunals. We should end unAmerican, unconstitutional, immoral, extrajudicial practices. Immigration All too often, we hear claims that we must import foreign workers because Americans won't do those jobs. 'Those jobs' are hard, physically demanding, outdoor work that require constant, careful attention to detail. Those jobs should be receiving a wage premium, not be barely-minimum-wage sources of employment. If those jobs paid that premium, there would be Americans available to do them. Mr. Bush's foreign guest worker scheme is a corporate welfare deal at the expense of the American worker. Phillies Phillies